In a supply chain network, one or more entities provide materials to one or more other entities that produce intermediate or finished goods. However, because of the increasing number of entities within the supply chain network, managing the inventory operations of, for example, on-hand inventory of the multiplicity of entities is too cumbersome. In addition, there is currently no specific data structure for the discrete time environment. The inability to effectively manage inventory operations and for the discrete time environment is undesirable.